JERUSALEM – Four months after her husband’s kidnapping triggered a Mideast war, Karnit Goldwasser brings her international campaign to free him to American Jewish leaders.
Next Sunday, the 30-year-old resident of Haifa, Israel, will “bring the case to these influential people to hear us and help us” when she addresses the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Los Angeles.
Goldwasser has already presented the plight of her husband, Ehud “Udi” Goldwasser, and his fellow captive, Eldad Regev, to Prime Minister Tony Blair in London and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
“All these nice people I talked to were attentive. Regretfully, there is no sign of life from Udi,” she told The Post.
July 12 was Udi’s final day of army reserve duty, and Karnit was preparing a party at their Haifa home when the radio reported a Hezbollah raid on Israel’s northern border.
That night, officers told her Udi was missing and believed to have been abducted across the border with a second soldier, Regev.
While Israel launched a fierce offensive against Hezbollah, Karnit launched an effort to win her husband’s freedom.
Their first anniversary passed on Oct. 14 without him. “When he comes home, we’ll celebrate his liberation and our anniversary,” she said.
But Karnit Goldwasser also knows that when three Israeli soldiers returned in 2000, as part of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, they came home in coffins.
Back-channel efforts at negotiation have failed to produce another prisoner swap.
“Hezbollah is not ready to even let the Red Cross pass on the letters I wrote to my husband,” she said.